Why do I need protein?

Protein increases thermogenesis (which means you burn more calories by eating protein, although the amount is super low and not nearly as high as the media brags).

Protein helps improve body composition. In this study, lowering carbs and increasing protein helped improve body composition. This isn’t my recommendation to go low carb, but it shows how replacing those mashed potatoes with some chicken might not be a bad idea.

In short, protein is very important if you want to look good naked, which is why you’re here, right? What is that? You know a ripped fitness model that eats nothing but fruits, veggies, and wheatgrass. Well congrats. You just found yourself a unicorn.

How much protein do I need to lose weight?

There are two circles of people when it comes protein requirements.

Circle 1: The “US Food Pyramid is God” crowd that says you only need 50 grams of protein per day.

Circle 2: The hardcore bodybuilder crowd that says you need 1-2 grams of protein per pound of bodyweight.

So who’s right?

Now you might be expecting me to say Circle 2.

Truth is, it depends.

The current DRI (Dietary Reference Intake) is 0.8 grams of protein per kg of body weight (0.36 grams per pound of bodyweight).

Now if you told a bodybuilder to get this much protein, he would shit in your cereal.

And he has good reason to.

That’s because these incredibly low protein recommendations weren’t designed for bodybuilders or fitness models.

As a general requirement, I recommend a minimum of 0.8 grams of protein per pound of bodyweight for fat loss.

This number would increase to 1-1.5 grams per pound of bodyweight as you get much leaner and dip into the single digit body fat range.

Update Feb 2017: I have recently been running an experiment on myself where I went from getting 1 gram of protein per pound of bodyweight per day down to 0.6 grams. Surprisingly I’m not dead. Find out what happened.

How much protein do I need to build muscle as a beginner?

If you’re a complete newbie lifter (meaning you have never lifted weights), and you start lifting, you will gain muscle regardless of your protein intake.

You could be consuming only 30 grams of protein per day, but if you’re lifting 3x per week, you’ll still gain some muscle (albeit not a lot).

The stimulus from lifting alone is enough to ignite a certain amount of muscle growth.

Nice post Keith. I think eating protein daily has kept me from having cellulite. I’m many many pounds overweight (I’m 5’6, female, inactive and weigh 106kg) but I don’t have any cellulite. If it’s not the protein then I have no idea what.